Tobias Carroll
Finished Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasai last weekend for one of the book groups I’m in. At first, I wasn’t as impressed with it as I’d been with his other work, but over time, the gulf between its two sections — one third-person, set in Venice, the other first-person and set in Varanasai — began to impress me more and more. Dyer leaves open the question of whether the protagonist of the first section is the narrator of the second, and out of the tension that exists there emerges something strange and ambiguous and, ultimately, deeply moving. I’m presently reading this New Yorker dialogue with Dyer about the novel and finding it interesting. (And Dyer is, as always, incredibly charming.) Continue reading →